For Dummies iPhone and iPad Game Development
Contents
1. Of course no game would be complete without a solid set of sound effects and a catchy theme tune The iOS makes it easy to add these things as well as tweak the more complex and optional aspects of them should the need arise Accessing the user s music library The iOS also makes gaining access to your user s songs audio books and audio podcasts very simple You don t have to restrict your users to your game s theme music but can allow them to pick and choose a custom playlist from their own library or even assemble an entirely new playlist on the fly This deceptively simple offering can help make your users feel more at home while play ing your game and often entices them back to play more Accessing simple ad hoc location based networking Specifically designed with games in mind Apple s Game Kit allows you to create ad hoc Bluetooth networks among multiple iOS devices without the need for relatively complex Bluetooth pairing This means your games can provide users with a very simple to activate multiplayer functionality with the only requirement that they must be in proximity to another iPhone or iPad user running your game Incorporating the fun Games need to be fun When developing any game examine several core prin ciples of making the playing experience fun There isn t a secret formula for games but instilling and maximizing fun makes a better game for your users gMBER D Chapter 1 Building Great i0S2. s fun Developing a game that can potentially reach an audience in the millions is a hugely rewarding experience no matter how you look at it Here s what makes developing games so much fun iOS games are usually small and conceptually simple to understand As with iPhone apps a single developer or maybe one with a partner and some graphics support can do them You don t need an enormous team with hordes of people managers and paperwork to create some thing rich and compelling You have the power to create something that can reach millions and you can do it from your own home vy Games on the iPhone and iPad are focused and clean The games get straight to the point of what makes them fun and help the users to dive in and out with ease They re simple but not simplistic This makes the design and implementation much easier and faster The popularity of the iOS platforms that is the iPhone and the iPad makes getting your work into the hands of users easier than ever Getting your game onto a mobile device used to mean negotiating a deal with a publisher these days it s as simple as signing up online with Apple Before we talk about how to design your games it s worth pointing out the single most valuable piece of advice one iOS game developer can give another Play other people s games The more you play iOS games the better you understand them The better you understand them the better your own games become When
3. Games 15 Happy players feel in control A lot of the fun in computer games is found in the pleasure of taking and manipulating the game world e In first person shooter games combat based games in which you have direct control over the way you move and the direction you look in this manipulation takes the form of running around and shooting things The player has control over what lives or dies in the game world but needs to be mindful of the dangers present in that world e In strategy games the player manipulates the world by sending units out to do battle but also needs to be mindful of how and where to allocate these resources In either case a good game gives the players the feeling of control by reacting quickly to their input in a way that reflects what the player wants Happy players get surprised A game that s exactly the same every time has no replay value A game in which you can anticipate enemy behavior after only a few seconds gets boring very fast And so another important component of a good game s fun factor is the amount that it surprises the player An acceptable definition of fun itself could be pleasure with surprises By combining the pleasure of being in control with an element of random chance you can ensure that your game is neither too predict able nor too random Happy players find patterns As people play a good game certain pat terns of behavior emerge in the way they play For e
4. course such as Super Monkey Ball and Labyrinth Traffic makes use of the accelerometer to detect the user shaking the device you can read about how to add the feature to the game in Chapter 25 13 14 Part I Getting Started y Tracking multiple screen touches Because people use their fingers rather than a mouse to select and manipulate objects on the iPhone screen take advantage of the fact that people have more than one finger The iPhone can detect up to five individual fingers on the screen at any one time and lets you determine when people perform gestures with their fingers on the screen The iPad can detect up to 11 individual touches on the screen simultaneously That s ten fingers plus your nose We checked using Jon s nose gMBER In games gestures allow your players to have a very fluid and natural source of input to your game world Flicking pinching and scrolling are very natural feeling things to do in the iOS If your game takes advantage of them your users will notice and they ll already know how to perform the most basic inputs to your game without needing a tutorial y Playing audio and video The iOS makes playing and including audio and video in your application easy You can play sound effects or take advantage of the multichannel audio and mixing capabilities available You can also play back many standard movie file formats configure the aspect ratio and specify whether the controls are displayed
5. is inches away from her fingers Your game needs to be fun intuitive and exciting from the moment you launch the application Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games 1 9 Traffic iPad vs iPhone R G B gt gt 2 gt 2 9 CO a ee Figure 1 4 Sketches of o the game s movement mechanics C iPhone 3 Add the elements of style color and smaller graphical details that establish the look and feel for your game Figure 1 5 shows the finished visual prototype of the game s main menu Ask yourself questions like the following and create your look and feel accordingly Do you want your game to look e Simple or complex e Realistic or cartoony e Serious or funny e Bright and cheerful or dark and brooding ay Consider the amount of development time you have to invest making the game art look realistic takes a large amount of time Additionally players expect things that look realistic to behave in realistic ways which also takes time to code In most games the game designer is forced to make a trade off over realism and fun and we suggest that you err on the side of fun See the sidebar Moving through Traffic nearby in this chapter for some of the thought process we used to design the mechanics and look and feel for the Traffic game 20 Part I Getting Started Moving through Traffic The process of prototyping your game on paper but didn t feel that these would be visibl
6. lt P iPhone iPads iDon tKnows The iPad Apple s new computer is fresh out devices we re talking about the iPhone the of the factories and being bought by the mil iPod touch and the iPad lions The iPad has been somewhat unfairly described as a giant iPhone which is inac curate from a user experience point of view but rather accurate from a technical point of view Because these devices are so similar when ever we refer to development on the iPhone we also talk about development on the iPad as well Parts Il and III of this book discuss the devel opment of the game for both the iPhone and the iPad Part IV has more focus on the iPad and discusses the changes that you need to make so your game is the best it can be on the iPad Both the iPad and the iPhone run the same operating system OS This means that 95 percent of the skills you pick up by reading this book apply to the iPad as much as they do to the iPhone When we talk about iOS or iOS Figuring Out What a User Wants from an iPhone Game Think about a typical weekday it s 8 a m and you re waiting for your train You re bored You ve already checked your e mail more times than is healthy you ve checked Twitter and told the world that your train is late and you ve checked the latest news headlines in your favorite news application And you re still bored If only you had a game to pass the time If you re using an iPho
7. online your game s initial download size can also be made quite small We cover making your game into a social beast in Chapter 16 Detecting the location of the user Using the iPhone s built in location services you can determine the device s current location or even be notified when that location changes In the context of gaming location has a variety of potential uses though many of them aren t obvious For example you could create a location based game in which the play er s location influences the game Pac Manhattan a 2004 research project into location aware games had players running around the streets of New York carrying bulky GPS devices and re creating a game of the arcade classic Pac Man Six years later you have all the power of that hardware in your users pockets Tracking motion and orientation The iPhone and iPad contain three accelerometers and a compass and the iPhone 4 adds a gyroscope which help you detect very small changes in movement You can use these features to detect when the user turns the device from vertical to horizontal In the case of iPhone games you re probably more interested in subtle movements such as tilting Cro Mag Rally by Pangea Software features a unique racing experience in which the user holds the iPhone like a steering wheel and turns it to drive the car There are also a number of dexterity based games in which the player must roll a ball around an obstacle
8. was that the developers could re use lines of dialogue for different intents shown onscreen By creating the illusion of choice the player feels more involved but in reality the game developers didn t have to do any more work than they needed to Surprising a player One simple way to add surprise is by adding random events to your game design The venerable game Missile Command has a very simple rule set Missiles fall from the sky and the player must shoot them down The fun comes from the random speed and direction that missiles fall Players don t have infinite ammunition and can t afford to recklessly shoot everywhere in hopes of getting every missile at once The challenge and surprise for the player becomes anticipating where and how the missiles fall 22 Part I Getting Started ar Encouraging patterns of play Play your game and have others play it enough that you can pick out pat terns of play Then build responses to these patterns by adding a slight tilt to the screen highlighting screen areas adding subtle animations and so on to make the player feel like his character is more involved in the game action The effect is subtle but noticeable and the game plays better for it A great example of one of these patterns is a side scrolling game based on jump mechanics think Super Mario Brothers by Nintendo After a certain amount of time playing people become used to timing jumps as well as combining runni
9. you play if you try to determine how the game actually works you often strike inspi ration Many games appear simple on the surface but if you delve deeper beneath the interface by paying closer attention to how you interact with the game and what the game presents to you in return you reveal much hidden complexity in the way the game is constructed Discovering how others have built their games while you play them is the best way other than reading this book to develop your game building skills and gain a better understanding of what makes a great game tick 11 1 2 Part I Getting Started Noting the Features of Good Games Figure 1 1 The Traffic game you build in this book EEE Figure 1 1 shows the final version of the Traffic game you develop throughout this book The concept for this game came to us after we noticed the popu larity of simple puzzle games line drawing games and solid but simple smartly presented game designs in the App Store How complex is the Traffic game Not very After you figure out how the game works in your head and on paper the actual programming doesn t take very long Developing Traffic took us a little more than two months working on and off Good iOS games share characteristics with good iOS applications of any kind Before you jump in and design and build your game make sure that you rec ognize these characteristics and incorporate them in your creation We don t us
10. Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games In This Chapter Getting your mind on the game developer track Discovering the features that make for agood game Figuring out your game concept Fine tuning the possibilities in your game design ust as you find with any type of app the range of games available for the iPhone and iPad is huge They range from games that are expected to be chart busters from the beginning the games produced by giant studios such as Electronic Arts to games made by individuals in their spare time that become huge hits for example Trism and Flight Control So as a soon to be iPhone and iPad game creator you need to find your slot in the range of games As the authors of this book we help you do that In this chapter we tell you how to get into the game developer mindset deter mine what makes a good game initiate a game concept and then design the game to fully develop that concept When we started writing this book we spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to showcase iOS game development After much deliberation we decided to showcase a complete game dubbed Traffic from start to finish The alternative was to merely show you how to build pieces that could be useful in the development of a game Instead we chose to build a commercial quality game step by step demonstrating all the concepts and knowledge you need to build an amazing real game of your own Enjoy 1 0 Part I Getting Started
11. ds to play your paper game 1 Patience a good idea and a sense of humor After you collect what you need sit down and think about the flow of your game Think about even the most mundane things such as menus and the game s launch Here s the paper prototyping process that you use to design the game flow its mechanics and its look and feel 1 Think about your game as a series of interconnected boxes of func tionality and then draw those boxes and connections Start at the highest level you can go and distill the representation to the basic set of game functions you need to implement As shown in Figure 1 3 making decisions about the flow of your game early is important gt ds Main Menu Bone Game Screen Settings High Scores Multiplayer al Y 4 Game Over Paused 2 Draw the game board and then add lines and arrows to show how objects move onscreen as shown in Figure 1 4 The simple act of drawing how game objects move and how they react to the user helps solidify how you see the game These movements and reac tions are the game mechanics When designing your game s mechanics consider how to keep the players busy without causing undue frustration In general giving the players the ability to do more means that the game maintains the player s interest This is critical for games because if the player gets bored at any stage the Home button
12. e gives you a great opportunity to think through enough how you want the game to work before you commit anything to code Here are some of the thoughts we had while designing Traffic By adapting the game into three lanes going forward we could have more cars onscreen at once without overloading the Originally we saw the game mechanics player in terms of the possibility of having as being a choice among cars driving for them crash This in turn allowed the player ward cars turning and the player direct to concentrate on managing more cars ing traffic However this simply wasn t fun enough more than half the cars didn t need to do anything to win points vr We decided on a simple brightly colored theme and designed every aspect of the game s look around that The buttons 1 There wasn t enough to indicate which would be reminiscent of traffic lights the cars should go where We thought about cars would be seen from the top down and adding blinking indicator lights on the cars we d keep the amount of clutter onscreen to a minimum a Figure 1 5 The initial prototype of the main menu Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games 2 1 Distilling the ingredients of fun There s no secret formula ingredient or blueprint for making your games fun The hints and tips in this section help but ultimately the only way to make a game fun is to tweak it until it s right Most players find games fun i
13. e all these characteristics in the Traffic game because it doesn t make any sense to simply cram ideas and features into a game in the spirit of embrac ing a platform Judicious picking and choosing is essential to building a great game In the next sections we go over some of the most important Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games Device guided design One of the keys to creating a great iOS application is to take advantage of the functionality that the device offers In the case of a new platform such as the iPhone 4 and the iPad capitalizing on the new possibilities is especially important especially when the application is a game Games are often expected to push the limits of a platform When your game can easily incorporate new iOS or hardware functionality new frontiers of game design and innovation open before you These elements of iOS functionality and how they relate to games are as follows Accessing the Internet Allowing your games to offer users the ability to post their high scores to social networking sites such as Facebook or quickly and easily download new levels or content packs for your games is not just a good idea it s essential Word of your game spreads faster as users share their scores and favorite levels via their Facebook or Twitter pages Your users also feel more connected and invested in your game because they re sharing it with their friends By providing access to extra content stored
14. eed and the speed it is now Repeat this process until your parameters feel right Sid s rule of halves is quite a bit faster than the alternative which can often involve plugging random numbers into your game code and seeing what works best in fact the math nerds among us will notice that it turns the time needed to figure out the best value from a linear equation to a logarithmic one There s no arguing with science kids gMBER D Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games 23 Get your game out to other people Show it to your friends show it to strang ers and eventually you need to bite the bullet and ship it You won t find better feedback than from a paying customer s reaction he won t pull his punches if he doesn t have fun with it What s Next We re sure that you re raring to go now and just can t wait to download the SDK from the iPhone developer portal That s exactly what each and every one of us did when we first started development we were ultra keen and dived right into the code Only later did we figure out that we needed to spend a little more time upfront understanding how games and applications work in the iOS environment We ask you to be patient In Chapter 2 we explain what goes on behind the screen and then we promise it s time to play in Traffic To make sure you re ready head on over to the Web site at http traffic secretlab com au or www dummies com go iphoneipad gameprog
15. f they feel in control can establish some pat terns of play and find that they re occasionally surprised by some element of the game When you design a game think through how to accomplish these characteristics of fun Giving a player control When designing a game experience figure out what the player controls If an aspect of the game isn t controlled by the player ask yourself whether the player could control it even indirectly and if he can t would the game work without it Giving the player control can be a complex process and can take a lot of development time to fully implement However you can cheat in a couple ways and still have the player feel like she controls more than she actually does For example in the role playing game Mass Effect players can choose the flow of conversations by selecting the next line that they wish to say However having every conversation branch into every choice is simply too many options for the game developers to cover but reducing the number of choices reduces the amount of control that they wanted the players to have The solution that the Mass Effect developers chose is quite elegant and simple Instead of showing the exact line that the player s character would say the game shows the intent of the next line When the player chooses an intent the line that their character would speak would be close to but not quite the text that the player chose The upshot of all this
16. ne you prob ably do You take your iPhone out of your pocket and touch the icon of your current favorite game to ease your boredom for a moment Sixty seconds later your bus arrives You instantly snap out of the pocket sized game world you were absorbed in push your iPhone s Home button and get on the bus On the train you take a seat and pull your iPhone back out Touching the icon of your favorite game again you ease right back into play at exactly the same point you left off before you got on the train Ten minutes later your train pulls up at your stop and you hit the Home button pop the iPhone into your pocket and head into work Why does all this matter This scenario reflects the way most people play the best of the games available on the iPhone They want to be able to listen to their music while they play and they don t want the game to demand so much of them that they ll miss their train or worse gMBER D Chapter 1 Building Great i0S Games People play their iPhone games in potentially loud bright and distracting environments while they wait for something else to happen or while they talk to people They play them for a minute or two before switching to something else and they expect their iPhone to know what they were up to when they finally come back to the game Establishing a Game Developer Mindset ar Why develop iPhone and iPad games Because you can Because it s time And most of all because it
17. ng and jumping Observe this when you test your game with others you can reward skilled jumping and running combinations and work out new ways to test these skills If your game is so eclectic that your players can t find any patterns to improve their game with take that as a signal that you need to add a little more struc ture to the game Applying Sid Meier s Rule of Halves A lot of games rely on the finely tuned parameters such as the speed of cars the strengths of enemies and the amount of ammo in your gun These param eters often need to be just right if they re not the game feels wrong in difficult to define ways When trying to tune a game the logical choice is to make small changes until it s right Unfortunately that s not possible when hundreds of factors are involved in a game it d simply take too much time Thankfully there s a solution Sid Meier the legendary developer of such classics as Civilization has a simple rule for tuning a game s parameters If a parameter doesn t feel just right either double it or cut it in half If a car moves too fast reduce its speed by half If the gun feels too weak double the amount of damage it does The point isn t that these new values are magically correct in fact you re likely to overshoot by a wide margin The point is to narrow down the range of things to check If your car is now too slow change its speed to some where between its old sp
18. play description 1 Conceptual notes on graphics feel and audio 1 Some examples of typical user interactions So how do you get these elements of your game concept in place Well the process somewhat depends on your game and we can t really give you a blanket solution that works every time But we can walk you through the steps of defining the elements as we did for the Traffic game This process offers an understanding of the design decisions required and one method for arriving at them Making the idea fun feasible and unique The idea for Traffic came from staring at the traffic passing and thinking That would make a fun game Of course an iPhone game based on realistic simulation of traffic patterns wouldn t be too fun or accessible so we had to pare down the idea to something that would work on the device Line drawing games have shown great longevity as popular titles at the App Store so we approached the Traffic design with the idea that it d be a line drawing game In line drawing games the player sees an overall view of a scene and uses the iPhone s touchscreen to score points by drawing lines from one object to another or a goal object The genre has exploded in popularity and you find many different variations on the general idea Some great examples of line drawing games that carry off the concept well are Flight Control by Firemint and Harbor Master by Imangi Studios Chapter 1 Building Grea
19. ramming When you re there click the big button that says Download Resources You ll get a zip file containing the imagery audio and other elements you ll need to build Traffic Keep it safe and easily accessible since we ll be referring to it a lot The site also contains the latest version of each code listing so if you get lost or just want to copy and paste the code instead of retyping it make sure you grab that too 24 Part I Getting Started
20. t i0S Games 1 We didn t want Traffic to be just another line drawing game so we brain stormed further striking upon the idea of a three lane traffic system with different colored cars As shown in Figure 1 2 the idea evolved over time starting at a line drawing game and ending at a traffic swiping game We dis cuss how we evolved the game for the iPad in Chapter 19 BEZ Figure 1 2 The evolu tion of the game from paper sketches a Evolving the Game No game idea comes fully formed and it s important to try several approaches to a game concept before you commit your time to actual devel opment To do this you must reduce the cost of throwing away ideas And you ll throw away plenty of ideas Trust us on that One of the cheapest ways to try out ideas is to do so on paper Prototyping on paper You may laugh but drawing your game on paper as shown in Figure 1 2 is one of the most important things you can do to make sure you re building a truly great game So how do you draw your game without feeling like a fool And how do you make sure what you re drawing is useful To effectively prototype your game on paper you need a few things all are very cheap and easy to acquire Here s the list 18 Part I Getting Started U Figure 1 3 The flow of the Traffic screens O E MBER RNS amp 1 Lots of pencils of various grades 1 Some paper 1 Some frien
21. xample in first person shooters the best players sidestep around corners rather than turn around them because sidestepping means that they can imme diately aim and shoot at any threat around the corner Clever game developers notice these patterns of play and find ways to improve the player s experience of them Designing a Good Game Although jumping straight into code and getting down to building a game is exciting clear and concise design is incredibly important in game devel opment perhaps even more so than it is to application development Designing a game is a very rewarding experience Although the frameworks and tools provided by Apple s iOS Software Development Kit SDK are vital to the process of building an iPhone or iPad game knowing what you re going to build before you touch the SDK is just as vital 16 Part I Getting Started MBER we amp Beginning with an idea Game designs don t just spring into existence fully formed Game design is an organic process involving writing reading examining rewriting and updat ing Go through the process of constructing an idea several times before you settle upon one A game concept starts to feel complete when it has the following 1 A description of the basic mechanics of the idea how the game should play out and the basic actions that the player takes while playing 1 A basic story describing the motivation for the game play A flow a basic game
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search